Agreed with you on the housing comment. The pricing has held up strongly everywhere, except the sales numbers has not grown at all across the retirement sector in the past two years which is something to keep an eye on. The thesis on the industry as a whole is that there will an avalanche of retirees as time goes on looking at care suites and apartments. It will happen with time but I'm a bit worried that in the meantime we'll see a supply glut that will make it harder for SUM and others to differentiate their product.
In FY18, 454 units delivered and 339 new sales (OCA delivered 272, sold 133 for comparison). Same thing is likely to happen this FY again with new sales tracking slightly lower than last year. Not sure how they reverse that in the short to medium term and I think that the weak sales reflects on the price of the stock because I'm not really sure where gains are going to come from. If you are long on the retirement sector, you will probably do okay, based purely on the numbers.
Just on the short/medium term, building consents on retirement units is currently 17% higher than last year, 1972 units consented in 2018, and 2310 in 2019 and this is just on 9 months data. There's a glut of listings coming on the market. Interesting times ahead.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/informatio...september-2019